OC Road Trip #1: the Dough Roller

The Dough Roller is expensive. Unreasonably so. I found this out while looking over the menu last night with my sister and some family friends. Lookit: I went into town myself, and we all agreed to meet up for dinner. After trying to meet up with them and my screaming niece (nothing wrong; she’s just a very loud person) last night, I finally sat down in the friendly, gazebo-esque (to me at least) Dough Roller at 3^rd St. and the Boardwalk. I didn’t really want pizza – what they’re best known for – and looked at the burgers. After my eyes bulged out of my head, I never quite warmed up to the fact that their cheapest burger is $9.50. I’ve eaten at much nicer places than this where the burgers were among the only reasonably priced things on the menu, and they were definitely not $10. For that much, it had better be as big as Alonso’s 1 lb burger!

So I just stuck with the pizzas that everyone else ordered. Two large ones ($17 each), one with pepperoni and one Hawaiian pizza with pineapple, ham and mushrooms. The pizzas were at least above average, if not better. They were ridiculously hot and gooey – you cannot fault the Dough Roller for cold or plastic-y pizza, because they just won’t give that to you. I had one slice of each. The pepperoni pizza had little curly pepperoni slices that looked more like cherry tomatoes than pepperoni. They were incidental to the pizza, though, and easily got picked off. In fact, my niece refused to eat any of them, and had a huge pile of pepperoni on her plate while she pulled the gooey cheese into her mouth.

The other pizza was better, but again the toppings were an afterthought. The ham, especially, seemed almost thrown on.

But I can’t fault the Dough Roller on making a tasty pizza. Nor can I fault them on their coconut shrimp – well, except for the $9 price tag – which were crunchy and tasty. They were deliciously coconutty, and I don’t like the feel of shredded coconut in my mouth so that’s saying something. But for the price, there should have been more, or else they should’ve been bigger.

Their beverages were comparable to other places. I got a pint of Yuengling on tap for $4

Because we were a party of six, they tacked on the tip for us. Grand total after tip? $71. For two pizzas, five shrimp, five sodas and a beer.

Man, the Dough Roller is running a good racket.